Every startup needs a website, but it can be hard to have a web presence without a decent budget. If you don’t have the money to hire a web designer or you don’t have the skills to code your own website from scratch, you can still create something incredible on pennies a day.
7 Ways to Build a Professional Website on a Budget
Your online presence starts with a quality website, but creating one is easier said than done. If you want to make an organized, functional, and beautiful website, use the following tips.
1. Create Quality Content Before Launch
Content is king on the internet, but it has to be well made and valuable to your audience if you want to get clicks. While you can make content at any time, creating it after you’ve launched your site can be a major time waster. It can also cost you money if you need to hire a freelancer.
Instead, focus on one type of content and try to get better at it. If you’re good enough, you can produce enough quality content without hiring a team of content creators (in the beginning).
2. Register a Professional Domain Name
Companies don’t have to have their own server to make a website. With content management solutions like WordPress, Squarespace, and Wix, you can purchase a quality host and site that’s secure. Avoid free web hosts, as they’re limited in storage, features, and protections.
Ideally, your domain name should include your business name with a “.com” domain extension. This makes it easier for your customers to find you when they search your business online. If “.com” is taken, consider using “.org,” “.io,” or change your business name altogether.
3. Use Templates, Stock Photos, and Filters
Templates and stock photos are cheaper to use, usually free, and are often customizable. Web themes are reasonably priced compared to hiring a web designer, and they’re easy to install. It is highly recommended to find reliable Adobe Photoshop free download links because this program does wonders when it comes to making unique designs.
To quickly edit your images, use apps like BeFunky. With one click, you can turn any image into a painting, touch up portraits, remove backgrounds, or add color to a black and white photo.
4. Spend Time on Critical Web Features
After you register your domain name, you probably thought that would be the extent of your ongoing costs. However, you have to keep your website updated to ensure it’s functional. If you overload your site with features, you’ll spend more time upgrading your pages and content.
A busy website also increases load times and makes your site harder to navigate. For these reasons, focus on building critical web features that improve your customer’s experience. If it takes more than two clicks to get to a primary web page, your navigation bar is too complicated.
5. Find a Few Inexpensive Marketing Tools
Financial difficulties are the biggest reasons why businesses fail. However, ineffective planning, inadequate management, and marketing mishaps also play a part. To avoid these pitfalls, invest in analytics, email, social media, and customer relationship management software (CRM).
In these categories, Moz Open Site Explorer, Mailchimp, Hootsuite, and HubSpot CRM are the most powerful and trusted software. They also have “basic” options that are 100% free.
6. Invest in Search Engine Optimization
It’s normal for businesses to use paid ads to attract customers, but that tactic can get pretty expensive. If you want to cash in on organic traffic for free, start increasing your visibility using search engine optimization (SEO). With a great SEO strategy, you could rank high on Google.
There are three key aspects of SEO: technical, content, and backlinks. Technical SEO includes the back-end of your website. Content SEO includes content best practices, like keywords, post length, and updates. Backlinking includes other websites that link back to your website.
7. Install Shortcuts and Web Plugins
If you can’t add a feature to your site without adjusting your code, check for a plugin. Plugins can increase the functionality of your website without any coding experience. In fact, plugins are much more user-friendly and accommodating as all you do is install them to your website.
WordPress has a few incredible (and free) plugins to try, like Yoast SEO, which grades your content for searchability, and WP Smush, which compresses images to make them load faster.
